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Exhibit

Two displays offer images still, moving to reflect upon

“Josiah McElheny: Towards a Light Club” and “More American Photographs” continue through April 7
in the Wexner Center for the Arts, 1871 N. High St., at Ohio State University. Hours: 11 a.m. to 6
p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays; and 11a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. Admission:
$6 and $8, or free for members, college students and children — and for all after 4 p.m. Thursdays
and on the first Sunday of the month. Call 614-292-3535 or visit
www.wexarts.org.

Art sometimes suggests a two-way mirror, offering a view of the ideas of its creator as well as
a reflection of the varied perceptions of the individuals who witness it.

The Wexner Center for the Arts presents two exhibits with distinct, yet direct, modes of
reflection — the surface of glass, the light that projects moving images on a screen, and the lens
of a still camera.

‘Josiah McElheny: Towards a Light Club’

As the gallery text explains, the exhibit “illuminates the intersections of glass, light and
moving images.”

The elements have been a long, steady source of intrigue and inspiration for the New York
artist. Adding another point of inspiration to the show is
The Light Club of Batavia, an obscure 1912 novelette by German writer Paul Scheerbart. In
it, a wealthy woman’s passion for illumination results in the creation of a “light spa” in an
underground cavern.

The artist revives the idea, in miniature form, in
Model for a Film Set (The Light Spa at the Bottom of a Mine), a collection of hexagonal
towers of colored glass on a gritty cement surface. He also suggests that it will live on in
The Light Club of Vizcaya: A Women’s Picture, a short film teasing the possibility that
Scheerbart’s utopian subterranean vision was long ago realized beneath a palatial
mansion-turned-museum in Miami.

With a few thoughtful yet playful pieces, McElheny invites the viewer to physically enter the
show’s intersections of mediums.

For
Three Screens for Looking at Abstraction, a selection of avant-garde short films from the
1920s is projected backward and upside down on screens unmoored from the typically flat cinematic
surface. They stand apart from the wall and bent at strong angles, further altering the original
projected images and creating a unique perspective for each viewer, depending on where one
stands.

At select times, the exhibition includes a performance element titled
WalkingMirror. In it, students from the Ohio State University Dance Department walk through the
exhibit space wearing sculptural boxes with angled full-length mirrors. The act confronts visitors
with their own reflections and, by extension, makes the mirrored images part of the
installation.

‘More American Photographs’

F or many people, the Great Depression is defined by the photographs of American life
commissioned by the Farm Security Administration. Among the noted photographers who took part in
the project were Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks and Ben Shahn. “More American Photographs” pairs
their iconic 1930s shots of migrant workers, coal miners and the segregated South with photos
commissioned in 2011 to reflect the era of the Great Recession.Among the most striking contemporary
photos are Katy Grannan’s portraits of the marginalized in California and Collier Schorr’s
America series, in which portraits of young cowboys are juxtaposed with snapshots of drag
queens and homeless men, casting a critical eye on traditional ideas of American culture.